50 Years Past Selma, Historic Town Makes Slow March Toward Change
NBC News – March 6
When thousands gather this weekend in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” some will likely conclude that the town that changed America has not seemed to make much progress of its own. The majority of registered voters in Selma are now black — along with most of the city, whites having fled in the decades since their African-American neighbors gained access to the ballot box. More than half the businesses in Selma are black-owned. But Selma is a poor city in one of the poorest states in the country … The events of Selma fast-tracked access to the franchise for Southern blacks who had been viciously denied the right to vote since the turn of the 20th century. Such swift action on a seemingly impossible problem was seen as extraordinary — and so, too, is the city most associated with this momentous change. But now as then, Selma should be looked at as an example, not an exception, said Nisa Miranda, director of The University of Alabama Center for Economic Development. Miranda said that in the 15 years she has worked with Selma, she has seen change — but incremental, not monumental. “Selma is seen as special and unique, as having charted some kind of a path,” said Miranda, whose work focuses on sustainable economic growth in rural communities like Selma. “It’s an expectation that [Selma] should push itself to do so much more because of its renown.”
790 Talk (Las Vegas) – March 6
Daily News 724 (Los Angeles, Calif.) – March 6
NBC 3 (Chattanooga, Tenn.) – March 6
Obama to look back, ahead at Selma
San Angelo Standard-Times – March 6
President Barack Obama will mark the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march in Selma, Ala., on Saturday, but he will be focused less on the past than on the future, particularly the agenda he hopes to carry out beyond his time in office. Obama is laying out plans for a post-presidential period that his friends envision as a busy third act of his life, using his public prominence to try to address socioeconomic challenges in the world … “Sadly, the next stage of the civil rights movement is on us. The ‘black lives matter’ movement is the current civil rights movement,” said Joshua Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Alabama and the director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South. “The school-to-prison pipeline, police brutality, sentencing — every single one of those has racial bias built into them structurally,” Rothman said. “Those things have blown up in the aftermath of Ferguson, but all of those issues were there before…. It really does seem, in the last five to 10 years, that we’re going backwards.”
‘A Call From Selma’ (video)
New York Times – March 6
When many of us think about the civil rights movement, we remember the courage of the black protesters who risked their lives and livelihoods to push for equal rights. But obscured in this history is the fact that it took the murder of a white clergyman to trigger the national outrage about rights abuses in the South that led to real change. At the heart of this story is the death of the Rev. James Reeb, who was in Selma, Ala., for protests in March 1965. In this Op-Doc video, one of the other white clergymen with him, the Rev. Clark Olsen, tells how they were attacked by a group of white men, killing Mr. Reeb. The assault became national news. Now retired in Asheville, N.C., Mr. Olsen says that publicly sharing these events helps him deal with his guilt that the country seemed to care more about the attack he experienced than the plight of Southern blacks at the time. (Andrew Beck Grace is a documentary filmmaker based in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He directs the Program in Nonfiction Storytelling at the University of Alabama.)
Chaos of huge crowd can’t mar marchers’ jubilation
Montgomery Advertiser – March 8
Alabama Reps. John Knight and Thad McClammy looked over with a smile and a shrug, the two lawmakers turning their bodies back and forth as they shuffled their way up the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was a little after 3 p.m. on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, and an unexpectedly large crowd of marchers, and a series of at least three unplanned marches across the bridge by several hundred participants each time, had transformed the four lanes of the Edmund Pettus into a mass of barely moving humanity … “People have literally used this event for whatever cause they have,” said Alicia Cohen, a University of Alabama student. Cohen and two college friends, Teairra Evans and Tatiya Maddox, were more interested in the experience of it all, saying they felt the event was simply too close not to drive down.
Port Clinton News-Herald (Ohio) – March 8
History of Alabama barbecue closely linked to politics, civil rights
Al.com – March 8
At various times in Alabama, barbecue has served as a social event bringing together rural communities, a political tool, civil rights backdrop and an avenue for entrepreneurship. “What I found really interesting was, over the course of the state’s history, barbecue has really served as an occasion and a vehicle to bring people together who don’t always spend a lot of time together,” said Josh Rothman, professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Alabama. The history of the cooking style is the subject of an essay by UA graduate student Mark Johnson, which was edited by Rothman and published as part of the state tourism department’s Year of Alabama Barbecue campaign, which began recently and highlights Alabama’s tradition and eateries.
Florence Times Daily – March 8
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – March 6
OPINION: Alabama’s Dangerous Defiance
New York Times – March 6
ON Tuesday the Supreme Court of Alabama prohibited the state’s probate judges from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This decision effectively throws down the gauntlet, challenging the federal courts to make earlier federal rulings stick — including last month’s refusal by the United States Supreme Court to stay a federal judge’s decision requiring the state to recognize same-sex marriages. It draws on a disturbing line of thinking in the history of American federalism, one that, were it to gain currency as a model, could compromise our entire system of law. The court’s position is that under the Constitution, it does not have to follow the rulings of lower federal courts; in its ruling, it promises to “defer only to the holdings of the United States Supreme Court.” (That said, Chief Justice Roy Moore’s public statements have been more equivocal; he told a radio host in Birmingham, Ala., “It would be a very hard decision, because I know there’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that authorizes the Supreme Court of the United States or any federal court anywhere to misinterpret the word marriage.”) (Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr. is a law professor at the University of Alabama and the author of “Reclaiming the Petition Clause.”)
Al.com – March 8
EPA disputes Gogebic’s fears of agency blocking iron mine
TwinCities.com – March 7
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disputed concerns raised by Gogebic Taconite that the agency might have tried blocking construction of its iron ore mine, as the EPA did last year with a large gold and copper mine in Alaska. After nearly two years of planning, Gogebic said on Feb. 27 it was suspending plans for the $1.5 billion iron ore mine in the Bad River watershed, a tributary to Lake Superior. Gogebic, also known as GTAC, said it was worried the EPA would draw on rarely used authority under the federal Clean Water Act to veto plans for the mine in northern Wisconsin, just as it could do in a pending case with the Pebble mine in Alaska … William Andreen, a law professor at the University of Alabama and a former EPA attorney, said that the EPA uses the veto process “very sparingly.” In the Pebble mine case, “it was the largest pristine salmon fishery in the world, and these were indigenous Alaskans,” he said. “These are factors that influence the agency.” In all, the EPA has interceded 13 times since 1980. Only two of the cases involved mines, said Andreen.
THE PORT RAIL: ‘War is Not the Answer’ is too easy a solution for a complex problem
Tuscaloosa News – March 6
“War is Not the Answer.” That was one of many stickers on the back of a car I was idly looking at while waiting at an intersection recently. In fact, various signs, among them “Obama/Biden,” were pasted all over the back window and door of the small SUV—kind of a rolling advertisement for the owner’s political agenda, I suppose. War is an ugly human activity. I had to agree in general principle with the car’s owner. But I suspect he or she felt that war was not the answer to anything that provokes or irritates or worse, including all forms of human outrage up to and including genocide. My mind turned the question over as we went our separate ways. I was reminded of an article I read not too long ago in one of my aviation magazines. (I have a little single-engine Cessna. It has so many hours on it that it should be classified an antique, and I read aviation magazines regularly to keep abreast of what’s happening, which, in my case, usually means dreaming about new airplanes and new equipment.) (Larry Clayton is a retired professor of history at the University of Alabama. Readers can contact him at larryclayton7@gmail.com.)
Excess nitrogen and phosphorus damages streams in ways previously unknown
Science Codex – March 8
An important food resource has been disappearing from streams without anyone noticing until now. In a new study published March 6 in the journal Science, a team of researchers led by University of Georgia ecologists reports that nutrient pollution causes a significant loss of forest-derived carbon from stream ecosystems, reducing the ability of streams to support aquatic life. The findings show that the in-stream residence time of carbon from leaves, twigs and other forest matter, which provide much of the energy that fuels stream food webs, is cut in half when moderate amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus are added to a stream … “It’s very apparent when excess nutrients lead to algal blooms in rivers and other aquatic ecosystems,” said study co-author Jon Benstead, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Alabama. “But their impact on accelerating the breakdown of dead organic matter, such as leaves and twigs, is a significant but under-appreciated effect on the health of freshwater ecosystems across large areas of the world.”
COLLEGE NEWS: March 8
Tuscaloosa News – March 7
… University of Alabama student Morgan Moran joined more than 175 students, community leaders, business professionals and faith leaders in Washington, D.C., last month for the ONE Campaign 2015 Power Summit. Participants met with lawmakers to discuss foreign assistance programs. Co-founded by Bono, the ONE Campaign is a bipartisan advocacy group fighting global extreme poverty and preventable disease. Advocates gave each congressional office a 1950s-style View-Master, which contained a series of memes on the importance of the programs. All of the memes can be seen on Buzzfeed. Moran worked with faculty, students and the ONE Campus team in D.C. to create a ONE Campus chapter at the University of Alabama in 2013; The University of Alabama’s board of trustees named Guy Caldwell, UA professor of biological sciences, as a University Distinguished Research Professor. The title recognizes UA faculty who have achieved international accomplishments in their field and received extensive peer recognition for their scholarly contributions and noteworthy academic service. Caldwell is internationally known for his research and expertise on malfunction in basic cellular mechanisms associated with diseases of the nervous system, particularly movement disorders such as Parkinson’s and dystonia.
University of Alabama to publish Corolla yearbook
Tuscaloosa News – March 9
The University of Alabama will publish the Corolla, a yearbook for the 2014-15 academic year, according to UA faculty/staff newsletter released Monday. In September, UA’s committee that oversees student media voted not to produce a Corolla, which has been published annually since 1893. The committee cited declining sales and financial losses. Monday’s newsletter said that the Corolla will have a traditional format with “tech-savvy innovations.” “The Corolla’s content will focus on preserving the broader Alabama experience and offer students an opportunity to be in the book in ways that capture their own individual experiences on campus during the year,” the newsletter states. The yearbook will be available to students, employees, alumni and parents and anyone can submit photos.
University of Alabama sorority donates books to Reading Is Fundamental
Tuscaloosa News – March 7
University of Alabama sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma recently collected and donated hundreds of books to the local Reading Is Fundamental program. The national philanthropy of the Kappas is the Reading Is Fundamental program. As an organization, they partner with RIF to help underserved kids discover the joy of reading and books. Last fall, the sorority sponsored an event that collected hundreds of books for an RIF library. The Kiwanis Club of Tuscaloosa is the local sponsor of the RIF program. The books will be used to help kids in the local Head Start program. Community Service Programs of West Alabama operates 11 centers in the West Alabama area. Children are accepted into the Early Head Start program at birth and into the Head Start program at age 3.
AmericanTowns.com – March 8
Calhoun County and I-20
Anniston Star – March 6
Numbers and statistics, like a children’s top, can be spun in any number of directions. Keep that in mind when you consider this tidbit about Calhoun County’s portion of Interstate 20: Nearly 1,000 crashes, regardless of severity, occurred on that 10-mile stretch of federal interstate in the five-year period between 2009-2013. That startling fact, embedded in reporter Tim Lockette’s story in Sunday’s Star about I-20, highlighted the undeniable dangers of regularly traveling our part of the state’s largest and most heavily traveled east-west roadway. What’s more, three fatalities occurred in Calhoun County’s I-20 crashes from 2010-12. On this, we’re No. 1 — the most dangerous area in Alabama for speeding-related interstate crashes, according to a report by state officials and the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety.
Attorneys general to discuss cybersecurity in Alabama next week
Alabama Public Radio – March 8
Alabama will soon be playing host to a meeting of attorneys general from across the South. The southern region of the National Association of Attorneys General will discuss data breaches, security issues and other topics at a meeting in Point Clear March 12 and 13. … The meeting will be chaired by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange. Reginald Hyde, executive director of the University of Alabama’s Cyber Institute, will be delivering a keynote address.
The Republic (Columbus, Ind.) – March 8
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – March 8
Sundown Lecture Series to explore former University of Alabama president
Tuscaloosa News – March 7
Most folks in Tuscaloosa can tell you who the Bryant is in the name of Bryant-Denny Stadium, but on Thursday, people can learn more about the man who inspired the other half of the name of the University of Alabama football stadium. The Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society’s Sundown Lecture Series will focus on George Denny, UA’s president from 1912 until 1936, a period of significant growth for the Capstone. The UA campus’ iconic Denny Chimes is also named for the Virginia native who died in 1955. Lucy Murphy, the society’s events coordinator, said that Denny was chosen as the subject of the monthly series because of his accomplishments at UA. “Most of the topics we have are people who have made important contributions in Tuscaloosa,” Murphy said. “Our mission is to educate folks and let them know our history.”
Bone marrow registration a mission for one family, U of A fraternity
NBC 12 (Montgomery) – March 6
Bone marrow registration has become a mission for the family of Hadley Mercer and the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter at the University of Alabama and a personal connection is the reason behind it. Angie Mercer drove to Tuscaloosa from Louisville and said more people than her niece are in need. “We’re still continuing the legacy even though she already had a match so that we can help other people as well.” Pi Kappa Alpha stepped up in 2014 because Hadley’s father is a fraternity brother. “We just thought it was such a good cause and that it changed so many lives that it was something worth continuing,” said Garrett Blalock. The fraternity held the second annual Hadley Drive Friday on campus. Pi Kappa Alpha, along with Delta Tau Delta and the Be The Match Registry, said their work isn’t done. Rachel Harris with Be The Match said, “We just want to continue doing this for all the people who are diagnosed that are coming after Hadley with those diagnoses.”
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – March 6
Week celebrates first-generation college students
Crimson White – March 9
Nick and Terry Saban; Mark Nelson, dean of the College of Communication and Information Sciences; and roughly 20 percent of the UA student population have one thing in common: They are all the first generation of their family to acquire a college degree. This week marks the third-annual First Generation College Students week, featuring a series of events highlighting the struggles and strengths of being a first-generation college student. “These students have unique challenges,” said Erika Mason-Imbody, the coordinator of the Coca-Cola First Generation Scholars Program. “They don’t have a go-to parent to ask questions and they don’t have the networking and connections that a parent with college experience may have given them.” Ashlyn Cook, a junior majoring in business and a Coca-Cola Scholar, is one of many UA students attempting to become the first member of his or her family to earn a college degree. “It’s a pretty powerful thing to set the stage for your family’s future generations,” she said. “My parents have worked so hard and showed me that without a college education, success is possible but definitely not easy.”
New marketing analytics degree offered online
Crimson White – March 9
This spring the Manderson Graduate School of Business began offering a new online master’s degree in marketing with a specialization in marketing analytics. The program is one of several online degrees offered and follows similar curricula as to the on-campus analytics graduate programs. Arthur Allaway, professor of marketing and coordinator of the Masters of Science in Marketing program, said students will take a general marketing class for about half of the 30-hour program. Online students watch lectures from on-campus professors and are tested on the same material as on-campus students. The program’s flexible coursework primarily targets full-time workers who want to earn a specialization in the growing field of analytics. “We just launched, but we’ve already had probably 15 people that said they want to do this,” he said. “Because marketing big data is relatively new and these positions are being created like crazy, and a lot of times it’s a mid-manager or a rising young person in a company who says, ‘I’d rather do that, and if I can get that set of skills, then I will double my salary.’”